The Old New Thing

February 2010 - Page 3 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Those annoying satisfaction surveys

February 10, 2010 Feb 10, 2010 02/10/10
Raymond Chen
It seems that the United States has gone satisfaction survey mad. You get your oil changed, they ask you to fill out a satisfaction survey. You make a doctor's appointment, they ask you to fill out a satisfaction survey. You call the company technical support phone line, they ask you to fill out a satisfaction survey. These surveys typically ...

No matter what you do, someone will call you an idiot, part 2

February 9, 2010 Feb 9, 2010 02/9/10
Raymond Chen
There was quite a bit of reaction to what I thought was a simple "Hey, here's what's going on" article from last year, specifically on how the Adaptive Display Timeout means that Windows doesn't always start the screen saver exactly on time. As you may recall, this feature adjusts the time it takes for the screen saver to activate if the user...

Moving by staying put

February 9, 2010 Feb 9, 2010 02/9/10
Raymond Chen
A few years ago, Michael Kaplan opined on his distaste for office moves, particular the ones for which there appears to be very little benefit. One of his options was "interview with whatever group moves into Building 24 and work for them instead." Many years ago, an organizational change to the project I was working on resulted in my group...

The 2010/2011 Seattle Symphony subscription season at a glance

February 8, 2010 Feb 8, 2010 02/8/10
Raymond Chen
Every year, I put together a little pocket guide to the Seattle Symphony subscription season for my symphony friends to help them decide which ticket package they want. As before, you might find it helpful, you might not, but either way, you're going to have to suffer through it. Here's the at-a-glance season guide for Gerard Schwarz's ...

For better performance, set all your monitors to the same color format

February 8, 2010 Feb 8, 2010 02/8/10
Raymond Chen
Pplu wonders why programs run more slowly when the system is running with multiple monitors. Well, for one thing, of course, when you have more than one monitor, there's more stuff on the screen for the system to keep track of. It's the same reason that programs run more slowly on a large monitor than on a small monitor. And if there's only...

Why doesn't my program receive the WM_DWMSENDICONICTHUMBNAIL message when I ask for an iconic representation?

February 5, 2010 Feb 5, 2010 02/5/10
Raymond Chen
A customer was having trouble adding Windows 7 taskbar integration features to their application: I'm trying to use the new Windows 7 taskbar integration features, but am running into a problem. I've made certain that my program has the and [corrected 8am] attributes set, yet I never receive a message in my window procedure...

The Brits once again come up with a clever solution to the problem of the scatterbrained client

February 4, 2010 Feb 4, 2010 02/4/10
Raymond Chen
My friend :: Wendy :: got into a state where she kept misplacing her passport. (I guess she keeps moving it around.) The first time she misplaced her passport and gave up looking for it, she reported it missing and received a replacement. Then she misplaced the replacement, and while searching for it, she found the original. She ...

Why doesn't the shell animation control tell me the dimensions of the animation it is displaying?

February 4, 2010 Feb 4, 2010 02/4/10
Raymond Chen
As we saw some time ago, the shell animation control suffers from many limitations because its job is to be a scaled-down animation control instead of one of its more full-featured counterparts. One customer wanted to know how to load an animation into the shell animation control and then query its dimensions. Well, there is no message that ...

Long-term temporary parking?

February 3, 2010 Feb 3, 2010 02/3/10
Raymond Chen
On my way to work, I saw a Notice of Proposed Land Use Action. The proposed new use for the property was listed as long-term temporary parking. What the heck is long-term temporary parking...